


Don't Trade it for Gold

by escherzo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU After S3, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Curtain Fic, Haunted Houses, Hunter Retirement, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-22 11:50:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2506772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The house was tucked away in the mountains, off a side-road in a place too small to have a name. It was haunted, of course, but there were worse flaws.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Trade it for Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaialux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/gifts).



> Another 'Sam gets Dean out of Hell' AU, because that is the best possible AU. Thanks to gaialux for the lovely prompts! I hope I have done your requests justice. 
> 
> Title from Tom Waits' "House Where Nobody Lives."

Dean took his first breath in October.

His first and not his last, and that was the important part. He woke cradled in his brother’s arms, the two of them coated in blood like a second skin. Sam’s eyes were wrong, but he was used to that. He’d seen it plenty by now.

Over the ringing in his ears he could hear Sam calling to him, calling his name, but he hadn’t figured out how to work his mouth just yet. The world swam in and out of view, blurred glimpses of a field scorched and smoldering and the wreck of bare trees in a blackened circle around him. Nausea rolled in his stomach, the bitter taste of sulfur in the back of his throat. He closed his eyes again.

“I’m okay,” he said, or tried to, the words thin as smoke, and Sam laughed and clutched him tighter. Still-drying blood dripped from Sam’s face to his—but no, not blood this time, tears. Sam was still laughing, hysterical and joyful and mad all at once. And then Dean was laughing too.

“We made it,” Sam choked out. “We got you out.”

“Knew you would,” Dean said, and he suddenly had half a mind to kiss Sam for it. Would have, too, but the world lurched again and Dean had to hold still to keep the rising bile in check.  

*

Sam told him that they were done, and Dean had no argument to offer; they’d paid their pound of flesh, and then some, carved from their bones on racks Earth couldn’t hope to imitate. They stumbled through the night to a nearby stream and crawled through the water on their hands and knees like children, joyful and relishing the cool water running over their bodies. There was no refreshment to find in Hell.

The stream ran red around them and Sam’s eyes flashed coal-black in the moonlight but his face was a picture of perfect contentment and Dean couldn’t help but smile.

They slept in the ashes of the field that night, huddled together as they dried. The night was bright and cool, perfectly silent but for the whistling of the wind through bare trees. Tomorrow they would move on to somewhere more permanent. For now, they slept, Sam wrapped around Dean with a hand over his heartbeat. Just to make sure it was still there.

*

The house was tucked away in the mountains, off a side-road in a place too small to have a name. It listed alarmingly to one side and was missing half its shutters; its face was scarred and crooked, a man who had found himself in one too many fights. The white paint peeled and cracked and in the right wind a gust could whip through the ground floor and raise a breeze to a mournful howl. But no one had loved it in many years, that much was clear—and so it was safety, and home, at least for a while.

Dean tapped the floorboards of the porch with the butt of a rifle, testing the give before he stepped on, and after pronouncing it safe enough he and Sam carried in their gear. Sleeping bags, a handful of assorted cans and emergency rations, guns, salt. They didn’t need much to get by these days.

There was an old mattress in the one upstairs bedroom, and when Dean threw himself onto it and spread out he could hear the frantic scurrying of mice that had made it their home in the absence of anyone else. He didn’t mind, so much. The ceiling was water-speckled but sturdy, no bowing, and these windows, at least, were intact. An old portrait of a woman hung on the wall opposite the bed, her mouth set in a firm line, her two children around her. Her home once, then, abandoned many years back. There were signs of an old love; the house still had carefully-repaired furnishings, vermin-eaten as they might be, and next to the bed there was a pool of candle wax, long-dried, on the floor, as though someone had knelt by the bedside at night with a candle in hand. Maybe telling her children a story, maybe watching over them as they slept. Maybe something worse; it wasn’t worth dwelling on.

He set up a salt line, just in case. Done and retired didn’t mean stupid.

*

The house wasn’t right, of course. The doorframes shifted during the night, but made no sound as they did. Quiet murmuring and the flickering of candlelight came from the living room as the sun went down, and if the lights worked at all they would have flickered. But if the house held another soul than their own, it stayed peaceful. And so they stayed; Dean patched up the walls, replaced the windows, tried to coax the great beast of the old stove into life. Sam spent his days with a sock over one hand, reaching out quick as a snake to grab mice by the tails and take them outside. They burned or threw away anything they couldn’t salvage, and the broken house in the wilderness became a home, slow and steady as the breath of a sleeping man. Electricity, heat, the other comforts of the modern world became secondary; the point was to stay isolated and safe and together.

It was boring work, but steady, and Dean spent his days patching the roof for winter and then warming himself in front of the crackling logs of the woodstove. October slipped into November and the first snow drifted down and they had gone three months without seeing another soul except for the two visits to nearby towns for supplies. Deans’ world was Sam and Sam’s was Dean, and as they huddled together in front of the fire, sharing an old blanket, all felt right, for once.

The smell of cinnamon drifted in from the kitchen, mixing with the sweetness of burning pine; from time to time, when the house was at peace the room itself would seem happier and the smells of old cooking would linger at the edges. An invisible third resident, baking to thank her boys for all their hard work, or maybe—as Sam had said, in a moment of sentimentality, “maybe the house was just lonely.”

It wasn’t lonely anymore. They filled the house with life, and later, as the snow grew deep, they found a dog limping through the woods, matted fur and painful thinness, seeking out the smells of cooking food. Another life to add to theirs, and when Sam took a look at its face and pronounced it Ash, Dean didn’t argue. Argued like hell when Sam said he was in charge of bathing it, though. It was cold enough without being wet.

He gave the dog a bath anyway.

*

Dean still dreamed of Hell sometimes. Nightmares, at first, but they gave way to half-remembered snatches of seeing Sam tearing his way through demons to reach him, eyes black and body—mouth especially—covered in blood. He didn’t wake up screaming from those dreams, just uncomfortable, and uncomfortably hard, and with not a clue why. Tried not to dwell on it, mostly. Sometimes he got up and ran around with Ash in the snow to clear his head, sometimes he just rolled over and hoped like hell Sam was asleep and jerked off. It worked well enough.

One night, late in December—might have been near Christmas, but he’d long since stopped keeping close track of days, and Sam would remember when that was, anyway—he woke from a dream and knew, exactly, why he’d been reacting to the others in that way. This dream he remembered, properly, remembered Sam pinning him up against a wall and pressing that blood-soaked mouth to his, and how much he’d loved it. How he’d gone to his knees and begged for more with Sam’s cut-up hands tugging hard at his hair, smearing blood through the strands. Sam hadn’t even touched him back, he remembered with a flush; he’d gotten off on just having his mouth filled with his brother’s cock over and over, from Sam’s harsh whispers about how good he looked, how he was made for this. Sam had called him brother, during. He liked that too.

“Sam?” he asked, breaking the stillness of the night air. Sam’s breathing was slow and even and they were face-to-face in the bed, huddled together under the blankets. “Hey, Sam.”

Sam opened one eye and smiled at him, and Dean leaned in, so slowly, giving Sam a chance to back out if he didn’t want this anymore, if it was a door better left closed and in the past.

Sam didn’t pull away. He threaded his fingers through Dean’s hair and tugged him in to close the distance, mouth moving hot against his own, and the gut-twist of arousal that went through Dean was almost painful in its intensity.

“You remembered,” Sam said, voice buzzing against Dean’s lips, and Dean smiled.

*

The house continued its quiet movements in the night, but the whispered words and flickering lights from empty rooms were drowned out by the howling of the wind outside and the whispers of two boys, safe together under their blankets, hidden and protected from the world around them.  It was hard to bear the cold, some nights. Some days Sam’s eyes still flashed black, some days Dean woke in a cold sweat from nightmares. But they had their home, their lonely ghost, their scraggly mutt of a dog, and each other.

That was as good a place to start as any.  

 


End file.
